Back from the Atari auction

Being an inappropriate and embarrassing person, I naturally took pictures of the location as it was just plain amazing.

Here are some pictures from the auction.

Outside the window.

Each bidder was given a conference room where they could work out the purchase agreements with Atari and the investment bankers as well as just spend time working between the auctions.

This was taken at the back of the auction room.

This is the skyline.

I won’t say in this post who won the various auctions as I don’t want to step on someone else’s announcement. I will tell you how the auctions went.

Typically (except in the case of Battlezone and Moonbase Commander) the bidders are placed together in a room. Each bidder is assigned a bid order in a given round. Each round, the bidder can agree to raise their bid $20,000 over the previous bidder or choose to pass. If they choose to pass, they’re out of the bidding and it continues.

The head of Stardock Entertainment (Derek Paxton aka Kael) did the bidding on one of the items were were interested in and I bid in a later auction on a different item.

At the end of the auction, the highest bidder and second highest bidder then negotiate a finalized purchase agreement of the intellectual property assets in question. If the highest bidder, for whatever reason, fails to close the deal, the second highest bidder than gets it.

We went there to get two items in particular. One in particular we really really wanted because we are insane fans of the series. That one we got. The other we wanted we didn’t get, we were the second highest bidder.

I imagine there will be announcements next week by the new IP holders to whom I congratulate. It’ll be good to see these awesome games brought back in one form or other.

Those IP's still seem overvalued at that amount... even though thats probably a fraction of what Atari would have charged for them normally. I am curious though... if you had bought the IP would you have made a sequel to Master of Orion using the Elemental engine?

Also... do the IP's come with Atari's trickle of income from digital sales or is that separate?

Anyways... I am really happy that Stardock participated and I hope that some games get made as a result.

@athelasloraiel they make world tanks... thats where all their money comes from. Weird... I know...

I understand why it wasn't worth it to pay more for MoO rights. Afterall Stardock has an even better simular concept in the GalCiv-series. But of course I would'nt mind 2 Stardock games in this genre, if they have had the capacity to develop both simultanously, which I doubt would be the best idea.

I would love to see GalCiv3 with Sins of a solar empire battles...that's me.

I'd hate to see tactical battles in GalCiv3, both rts or tbs. I'd like GalCiv to concentrate on strategical warfare, and not human tactical exploits. We have enough of those kind of space games already, and it's not making them any better, just much poorer strategy-wise.

Another reason is that the GalCiv2 battle system would work so good for fluent multiplayer games.

Quoting Anguille, reply 56 I would love to see GalCiv3 with Sins of a solar empire battles...that's me.

I'd hate to see tactical battles in GalCiv3, both rts or tbs. I'd like GalCiv to concentrate on strategical warfare, and not human tactical exploits. We have enough of those kind of space games already, and it's not making them any better, just much poorer strategy-wise.

Another reason is that the GalCiv2 battle system would work so good for fluent multiplayer games.

I know many wouldn't like it...as i said, it's me. My reason for this is fun, not tactical advantage or exploits...i am a fairly average player so i don't have the problem to be beaten by the AI (if there's one, which is not the case in all games).

I'd like to see something more involved than GalCiv2, but not tactical battles. Maybe something closer to Gratuitous Space Battles, where you can start the battle by giving general orders, but then it plays out on its own.

Maybe Space Admirals could give you the ability to give orders after a certain time, based on skill (I'd like to see Space Admirals work like Victoria generals)

I think that would give some sense of control, be something the AI could handle fairly easily, but not reduce the game down to tactical exploitation (which is an issue with Elemental series if you let it become one)